Magical Mashrabiya

From a Woodworking Shop
Every month I strive to bring my readers interesting article on a variety of topics ranging from art, gardening, books, and travel. It occurred to me that readers may also enjoy reading about fine crafts. ​

My photograph of a mashrabiya window I saw in Granada, Spain at the Alhambra in the Hall of Ambassadors.

Magical Mashrabiya
By Steve Golden

For the last thirty years, I have been a professional wood worker making all types of furniture, but in the past couple years I have become fascinated with Arabic decorative woodwork. Recently, I visited the Reynolda House Museum of American Art to see the exhibitFrederic Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage. Church’s near east travel brought to mind my own travels to Morocco and Southern Spain and how it has affected my woodworking craft. Like Frederic Church with his plans for building Olana, what feeds my imagination and what woodworking I want to do for myself has totally changed since my return. Frances Mayes in her book A Year in the World remarked about Morocco and Spain “what man can travel this long road and not fill his soul with crazy arabesques?” Only too true! The wooden lathe turned Mashrabiya screens and windows I saw in Spain and Morocco absolutely fascinated me. I had to learn how to make them!  I have been busy the last few months building mashrabiya shutters for my Moroccan/Andalusian themed library.
 
Dating back to the 9th century, the craft of mashrabiya has long been, and continues to be, a part of Arabic culture. I did not realize the extent that woodturning was utilized in the east and southern Mediterranean. Mashrabiya was in most of the historic buildings I visited in Morocco and Southern Spain. Over time, mashrabiya has come to mean the turned inter-locking pieces making up a window, screen or other decoration. Arabic turners refer to it differently, however. Agnieszka Dobrowolska says it best in her book The Building Crafts of Cairo:  “While the craftsmen have a name for any piece of a mashrabiya screen, there is some confusion about the general nomenclature. The term mashrabiya means an architectural element-a bay window- rather than the technique by which it was produced, but it also applied to the turned wood panels of which these bay windows are made. The panels wood turners produce are often called ‘arabesque rather than mashrabiya.’ Arabesque in modern Egyptian Arabic refers to woodwork that allows a draft of air but seals the view to the interior.”
 
The main function of mashrabiya can be discerned from the Arabic root meaning of the word as a place of drinking/the place to cool water, as water in clay pots placed behind these screens cooled the air flowing into the space as well as the water. Mashrabiya evolved by the 14th century to jutting balconies with interior seating from which one could view the world below but not be seen. Besides the main functions of controlling air and light flow and providing privacy, mashrabiya has been used decoratively from early in its history to the present. It is has been used to great effect in many pulpits of mosques, known as minbars, as well as for interior doors, screens, and many types of furniture. A large market for Egyptian, Iranian and Syrian mashrabiya decorated furniture existed in late 19th and early 20th century.

Making mashrabiya is a very exacting and time consuming craft. Thousands of wooden pieces must be turned, drilled and assembled to make up a screen. The function of the mashrabiya determines the density of the turned elements. Fine mashrabiya work can reach densities of 2,500 inter-locking pieces per square yard! Because the numerous small inter-locking pieces are not glued but instead held together by the surrounding frame, mashrabiya is ideal for the harsh North African climate. This sort of construction allows for the shrinkage and swelling that inevitably occurs through the seasons and demanding temperatures of the Middle East and northwest Africa.  

John Frederick Lewis, A Lady Receiving Visitors, 1873. Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches. Yale Center for British Art.
​ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Frederick_Lewis_-_A_Lady_Receiving_Visitors_(The_Reception)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)

John Frederick Lewis (1804-1876), one of the first so called British Orientalist artists, lived in Cairo for nine years and captured the feeling and atmosphere of mashrabiya in his paintings of Egyptian interiors. In these scenes, Lewis painted with meticulous accuracy all the fine detail of the wooden mashrabiya windows, recreating the brilliant effect of light diffusing through the mashrabiya lattices which gives his paintings a magical feeling. This feeling, which Lewis evokes so well, is similar to the atmosphere that I want the shutters to create in the library. The orderly pattern of my “crazy arabesques” splinters the light and makes the window look like so many magical diamonds creating for me a spirit of place that reminds me of the bright colorful reality of Morocco and Southern Spain.

Here are my partially complete mashrabiya shutters. I am working on filling in the middle lattice structures. When the four shutters are complete, there will be 744 individually turned pieces in all.

~ Steve Golden is a master woodworker who has been listed in Early American Life magazine's Directory of Traditional American Crafts and is an alumni of Summer Institute at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Art. ​